The Republicans are conservative in name only.

The desires of Republican base voters have been stymied repeatedly since the Tea Party movement gained a public profile as a reaction to President Obama’s Obamacare debacle of 2009. So why have the Republicans, who were elected to put the brakes on the progressive agenda, been feckless, even when they control the Presidency and both houses of Congress?

The problem with the American right is that it sees itself not as a traditionalist, reactionary force blunting the “long march” of Cultural Marxism through the institutions, but as the true liberal 19th century egalitarianism. In essence, their argument is, “We’re better leftists. Those rascally Democrats are still the real racists. They divide people by race, sexual orientation, and gender. Did you know Robert Byrd was in the Klan?”

Thus they geld themselves before the battle even begins. The tenets of the progressive are accepted as the parameters of the debate. Hyper-individualism and tabula rasa theories of human behavior are the ideology of both parties. The Democrats preach it, the conservatives help implement it and call it “our values,” because it seems reasonable when compared with the latest social justice crusade being screeched by obese, gender-fluid blue haired harpies. Besides, if they didn’t go along, the media would call them bigots. Select your ad hominem based on the situation: Nazi, homophobe, anti-Semite, etc.

This is how we get a right that claims it is the true heir to the legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther Kang, a man who was known to be an abuser of women and a communist agent. This is how we get a right where Ike is a hero for forcing White and Black schoolchildren together at bayonet point to the detriment of both communities. This is how we get a right where sodomite marriage is celebrated by the likes of faux-conservatives such as David Brooks who claim it is a pro-marriage policy.

The leftward slide down the slippery slope continues. “Conservatives” conserve the latest Marxist innovation, tepidly resisting the next, until that becomes “our values.” It is this mental rut that the opposition to the left cannot pull out of. Never mind that the progressives don’t actually believe much beyond expanding their own power, as long as the mostly White opposition can be shamed into using individualism as a survival strategy, victory is just a matter of time and demographics. Apparently Mitch, Paul, and the boys haven’t gotten the memo that the modern left has moved to identity politics. The Revolution is permanent. The Republicans are a few years behind.

The mainstream right fails time and again with their tired bromides about how they believe in human equality more than the left, failing to learn that they will never out pander the left. It is big news if a Republican presidential candidate can break ten percent of the Black vote. The Republican Party has a religious belief that if we cut taxes and end the left’s plantation mentality of the welfare state, Africans will take us to Mars and beyond. It’s in the movies. It has to be true!

That Blacks had better social outcomes in the bad old days before the War on Poverty and affirmative action seems like an easy attack for the right to make at that point, but the cucks will never touch it. That would open them up to one of the aforementioned ad hominems: the right secretly longs for Jim Crow, maybe even slavery! White Sooopreeemist!

If the peasants ever get tired of this lose/lose situation, the right’s party bosses and “true conservative” commentariat never do. It’s the path to respectability, social acceptance, and, of course, shekels. If we lose our nation and our people are wiped out by hostile elites and their compliant “new Americans,” so what? We’re just individuals who will be dead before any really bad stuff happens. Besides, did you see that based Black guy in a MAGA hat? Liberals BTFO!

One can be forgiven for giving up on the American political system. Trump was traditional America’s “Hail Mary” pass. If he’s done a fraction of what is needed to pull the U.S. out of its nosedive, we haven’t seen it. Maybe it’s too much to ask of one (highly flawed) NYC billionaire. Maybe the kernel of our own destruction is contained in our own founding. “All men are created equal” is a romantic notion, but not one that comports well with the hierarchical reality of the natural world. Whether the founders were hypocritical White supremacist slave owners or whether they were flawed but still great men of the Enlightenment, it probably doesn’t matter. The American Empire and the lies on which it is based will end. It is our job to lay a foundation for a more just world in the aftermath.